How to prepare for MAGS

[Tenacious Stu]

I love AGS, and after making my first game, Entrapment, for the AGS Bake Sale last year, I have dabbled with a few projects, but ultimately have yet to finished one since. I think MAGS is a great way to work to a deadline, share progress with like-minded people and even get additional input into parts of your game.

My question is: How do you prepare for MAGS? Is there anyone who has competed in MAGS or similar game jam that has any helpful advice or tips on taking part in MAGS?

The reason I've chosen this Month is that I have a lot of free time coming up and wanted to make the most of it.

[Ghost]

You can't prepare, that's the idea. You get the theme and start from scratch 

But I found it helpful to give myself
- one week for "toying with theme, trying things out",
- then one week of "making a functional playable game"
- and one week of "refining, testing, improving".
That way you have small goals and, most importantly, you have a safety net of seven days should you hit a roadblock.

If you are new to MAGS, you may want to try my approach: Small-scale, single puzzle idea. Then layer stuff on it as long as you have time. A month isn't much time to make a game but is is enough time to make a small, nice-looking game. You got some experience already, so you should know where your strengths lie, and make use of them.

I also tend to really try to get the game done first. No fancy animations and stuff before I can play through a puzzle sequence.

A calendar is useful to have- just mark your "milestone" days red, and cross days out as you make progress.

It's also very, very useful to have a good beta tester, probably one you have worked with before. I remember Chance Of The Dead, where fixing stuff actually took longer than writing the whole game and without a tester who gave detailed feedback and kept suggesting stuff it would've been a really lame game. So get in contact with a good tester. 

[Myinah]

I'm definitely far from an expert, and I didn't work alone, but myself and Soxbrooker have just finished our first MAGS entry so I thought I would share our process as a team in the hopes that it helps somewhat.

The stages we went through were similar to Ghost's, but there being two of us we can bounce ideas off each other and I think that cuts down some of our time debating projects. It took me a day to write several different concepts and then share them with Sox and develop them briefly together before picking the one we liked the most. Then I go away and develop the full script asap. I think Woo took me a day or two to get sorted.

Once we had our game outlined Sox started doing the basic place holder art so we could code the majority of the game. It was our first real experience with AGS so coding took a lot of time and we had to work out so much stuff because we chose to do a "simple" left to interact, right to look mouse click system. We regret nothing but we were definitely tearing our hair out over it. Once we had our mouse system and puzzles down though really it was just all polishing.

For us working as a team probably affords us a bit more polishing time because while Sox is creating assets, I'm coding or writing dialogue, and then when I am making a stupid mistake because I've been staring at code for too long, Sox comes in and spots the mistake instantly his fresh eyes. I think working as a team helps us a lot.

Aside from that, a good play tester is definitely essential too. We would have had a far worse game had it not been for our play tester Arj0n so we are eternally grateful to him for his advice.

Ok really this should just be TL;DR - What Ghost said! 

[Ghost]

Myinah makes a good point there, teamwork. Team up. Even if you do not really form a team, get someone to share ideas with. Use a GoogleDoc.

And buy a notepad and keep a dev dictionary. They can become interesting reads a month later!

[Tenacious Stu]

Thanks for the help guys.

There are a few things I've kind of already decided upon.

1) Art Style - I know that when I'm working on art for a game, this takes me the longest time, so I want to go with an art style that will be quick to create/animate.

2) Time Keeping - I know that the first week I'm not going to get much chance to work on the game itself, this will be mainly concept work. Thinking about the game, story, puzzles, making notes. Then towards the end of week one I'll create a full working prototype as Ghost said 'get the game done', then add in the fancy animations, artwork, sound, polish until it's done.

I've decided to be very transparent with the games development and posting updates on the MAGS thread. I'll be looking to the AGS community and social media to bounce ideas off and help test. I'm not going to be attempting a huge game. I've decided that it should have 4 strong puzzles which will make it a small scale game.

I'm really looking forward to the development of this game and to trying to get people involved. I hope it's a good theme 

[Radiant]

For a MAGS game, it is key to keep the scope of the game small, because you'll run out of time otherwise. This is also a pretty good habit for game design in general.